I've been quiet on the blogging front - I think it's because I've been reading a lot of D&D stuff. The party finished their latest adventure and I had to get the next one ready. Also the (first) big box of toys arrived from America and I've been reading the module I bought (Red Hand of Doom). AND I bought the Magic Item Compendium and I've been reading through that for campaign inspiration.
Anway, I have been playing some games.
13 Deadend Drive - I took this over to the nephew and niece and played with them. I just wanna say that I totally kicked their butts... Of the 12 characters in the game, all the other 9 died and I was left with the last three. I didn't realise that the game should end then and we kept playing until one was left alive. A notable event was the chant of "Kill the Cat! Kill the Cat!"
Monsters Menace America - After watching the movie Mars Attacks! the kid and I pulled out MMA to show Scrabblette. She didn't like it at all but the kid and I had a big showdown which I only just won.
Classic Waterworks - Let me totally can this game: Tom Vasel rates it a 2 and comments "I just don't like it". It comes with two decks of cards which you shuffle together, but the cards were cut at different sizes! I've never seen anything so shonky. And it was boring.
TransAmerica - Just like its cousin TransEuropa. The red and orange are a bit difficult to tell apart.
BuyWord - a decent game but maybe too driven by luck. It's different from Scrabble in that you're much more motivated to make long words. Scrabblette managed to beat me!
Showing posts with label Dungeons and Dragons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dungeons and Dragons. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Life's Too Short to Play Twilight Anything (Again)
Following my ambition to play more of the BGG Top 50, CyberKev and I sat down yesterday afternoon to play Twilight Struggle. I hadn't really heard much about it before, and had no particular prejudice against, but I was worried by the play time listed at 3 hours. Due to the rest of my life crowding in on us, we only had 4.5 hours available to play. I took the USSR and CyberKev took the USA.
I'd read the rules on BGG so I sort of knew what was going on. The big mistake I made was misunderstanding about playing scoring cards. I thought the rule that says scoring cards must be played meant that scoring cards took effect at the end of the turn even if you hadn't played them. That's not true - you must use one of your actions to play them. So when I found myself with 2 scoring cards in my first hand, I wasn't entirely satisifed. In the first turn we scored 3 regions despite having not much time to do anything in them.
I also struggled with the Space Race. I hate hate HATE HATE HATE HATE the mechanism where you roll a d6 to see if something works for you. You spend your card on the Space Race and if you roll right you can advance. If you don't, you get nothing. What, are we playing Talisman here? That's not a mechanism for a proper game! It's especially bad because you can't do anything to influence the result of the roll. In any game where the rule is "if you roll 1-3 on d6 you succeed, otherwise you fail" what's going to happen is that one player is going to succeed all the time and the other player is going to fail all the time. Game designers: don't do that!
Games which use d6 rolls properly include Igel Argern where you can space out your hedgehogs so as to take advantage of a wide variety of rolls; D&D where you roll fistfuls of the things so the numbers even out; and BattleLore where even if you roll Lore which doesn't kill anything, you still get some stuff. Talisman is the chief sucker paramount with regard to d6 rolls, where depending on the result you will become rich or totally screwed. Way too random for my tastes, and I was amazed to find such a mechanic in such a highly rated game.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah... the Cold War. So CyberKev started off really strong in Europe and took a commanding lead on points. He maintained his lead for several turns until I realised the value of military action and started coups in a few places. He allowed me to make up some points in mil ops, and some lucky play by me got me into the lead.
Let me share my thoughts on coups and realignment. By placing influence points you can gain up to 4 influence. A coup can potentially gain you 8 influence, and I can't remember the numbers for realignment but it can be handy. Therefore placing influence is often not the best option, and I think for the first few turns we didn't really appreciate that. Anyway, back to the game.
I really like the event cards - they're well designed. I don't like how most turns I had a fistful of American cards that I needed to try not to play - that caused a lot of anguish, especially as the Space Race was so clearly a waste of my resources. When I did have Soviet cards I wanted to play them for events AND for points, so there was a lot to think about there.
We found that the game involved a lot of racing around to different continents when we figured out that scoring was going to happen there. Bluffing might work, but I wouldn't depend on it. I felt a bit rushed - I was always trying to win one more battleground country so I could dominate, whilst making sure CyberKev didn't have all the battleground countries somewhere else. The other continents simply didn't exist for that turn. That felt strange. Also, I didn't much like the idea of battleground countries. Sure, I presume they were countries where the Cold War was contested particularly fiercely, but we're recreating history here - I would have preferred the option to choose our own battlegrounds.
After 6 rounds I lead by one point. At that point we'd been at the game for 4.5 hours, and it looked like we needed another 3 hours to finish. In my opinion, 7.5 hours is way too long for any game except cricket. For that reason alone I will never play Twilight Struggle again. Although the game implemented its theme very very well, it didn't really excite me. Yes, I agree, it's a decent game, but it's not a game for me.
So who won? Well I asked CyberKev to do a final scoring after I left because although I was ahead on the VP track I didn't feel like I was doing so well. Indeed, the USA was 10 points ahead after the final scoring after Turn 6. Hmm... if it had been much worse than that I think a thermonuclear war would have looked good. Last I heard Mrs CyberKev was battling on in my place, and the war continues...
I'd read the rules on BGG so I sort of knew what was going on. The big mistake I made was misunderstanding about playing scoring cards. I thought the rule that says scoring cards must be played meant that scoring cards took effect at the end of the turn even if you hadn't played them. That's not true - you must use one of your actions to play them. So when I found myself with 2 scoring cards in my first hand, I wasn't entirely satisifed. In the first turn we scored 3 regions despite having not much time to do anything in them.
I also struggled with the Space Race. I hate hate HATE HATE HATE HATE the mechanism where you roll a d6 to see if something works for you. You spend your card on the Space Race and if you roll right you can advance. If you don't, you get nothing. What, are we playing Talisman here? That's not a mechanism for a proper game! It's especially bad because you can't do anything to influence the result of the roll. In any game where the rule is "if you roll 1-3 on d6 you succeed, otherwise you fail" what's going to happen is that one player is going to succeed all the time and the other player is going to fail all the time. Game designers: don't do that!
Games which use d6 rolls properly include Igel Argern where you can space out your hedgehogs so as to take advantage of a wide variety of rolls; D&D where you roll fistfuls of the things so the numbers even out; and BattleLore where even if you roll Lore which doesn't kill anything, you still get some stuff. Talisman is the chief sucker paramount with regard to d6 rolls, where depending on the result you will become rich or totally screwed. Way too random for my tastes, and I was amazed to find such a mechanic in such a highly rated game.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah... the Cold War. So CyberKev started off really strong in Europe and took a commanding lead on points. He maintained his lead for several turns until I realised the value of military action and started coups in a few places. He allowed me to make up some points in mil ops, and some lucky play by me got me into the lead.
Let me share my thoughts on coups and realignment. By placing influence points you can gain up to 4 influence. A coup can potentially gain you 8 influence, and I can't remember the numbers for realignment but it can be handy. Therefore placing influence is often not the best option, and I think for the first few turns we didn't really appreciate that. Anyway, back to the game.
I really like the event cards - they're well designed. I don't like how most turns I had a fistful of American cards that I needed to try not to play - that caused a lot of anguish, especially as the Space Race was so clearly a waste of my resources. When I did have Soviet cards I wanted to play them for events AND for points, so there was a lot to think about there.
We found that the game involved a lot of racing around to different continents when we figured out that scoring was going to happen there. Bluffing might work, but I wouldn't depend on it. I felt a bit rushed - I was always trying to win one more battleground country so I could dominate, whilst making sure CyberKev didn't have all the battleground countries somewhere else. The other continents simply didn't exist for that turn. That felt strange. Also, I didn't much like the idea of battleground countries. Sure, I presume they were countries where the Cold War was contested particularly fiercely, but we're recreating history here - I would have preferred the option to choose our own battlegrounds.
After 6 rounds I lead by one point. At that point we'd been at the game for 4.5 hours, and it looked like we needed another 3 hours to finish. In my opinion, 7.5 hours is way too long for any game except cricket. For that reason alone I will never play Twilight Struggle again. Although the game implemented its theme very very well, it didn't really excite me. Yes, I agree, it's a decent game, but it's not a game for me.
So who won? Well I asked CyberKev to do a final scoring after I left because although I was ahead on the VP track I didn't feel like I was doing so well. Indeed, the USA was 10 points ahead after the final scoring after Turn 6. Hmm... if it had been much worse than that I think a thermonuclear war would have looked good. Last I heard Mrs CyberKev was battling on in my place, and the war continues...
Monday, March 05, 2007
The Adventures of Longfellow Jumbles
Mr Jumbles is the NPC leader of the band of adventurers in our D&D campaign. He's a hobbit snake oil salesman. Here is his blog.
We've played two sessions now, though the first was just rolling up characters. Tonight we started with the first real adventure - a fairly standard dungeon exploration. Of course, with the kid's hyperactive character and Scrabblette's mysterious one, nothing is really very standard.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Deities and Demigods, Volume 2
I showed Scrabblette the D&D books last night because she loves beautiful books as much as I do. We talked a bit about this formerly hidden sordid geek phase of my life and this morning I delved under the house to find my old character book. We played several times a week for about 4 years with rotating DMs and varying numbers of players, so I had a lot of characters. My character book carries the optimistic title "Deities and Demigods Volume 2".
I know there's nothing more boring than a role-player telling you about his characters, so you should stop reading this post now. I preferred to play thieves - characters with a wide variety of tricks up their sleeves, the occasional chance to do some exploring by themselves, and the occasional chance to rip the other guys off. I also had success with clerics and fighters, but never achieved much with magic users. Here are some of my more successful characters.
Hemo - elven thief - died in the Demonweb Pits. It was a right royal pain keeping an elf alive - they had to be resurrected rather than raised, which was expensive. Hemo was the perpetrator of the biggest rip-off I managed in my time. Together with Erica the Cleric he killed a frogemoth and stole the treasure which was over 100K gp if I remember correctly. Started a cafe called Hemo's Eat House which lasted longer than he did.
Charlemagne - human bard - not sure where he died. Spent some time in the service of Lolth in the Demonweb pits. Bards were hard to make, and not very much use, so Charlemagne mostly filled in as a crappy fighter. I do like the more obscure character classes though. I had a number of druids as well.
High Lord Paragon - human fighter 18 - retired. Paragon was originally a paladin but our campaign didn't really support the paladin class so eventually he fell. He was typically the leader of any party he was part of, and always fought in the front row without fear. In particular, he stood like a rock while wussy magic users such as Bon and Lysipius fell like flies. In one of his most famous battles he severed both legs of a nycadaemon in one round.
Saint Bernard - human fighter 16 / cleric 19 - retired. Bernard completely lacked any personality. With his intelligence of 7, dexterity of 7 and charisma of 6 (after Lolth deformed him), Bernard was often mistaken for a victim rather than a hero. Nevertheless he was always in the thick of the fighting and able to patch up the party afterwards. Eventually Bernard became the person to whom low-level characters sold excess magic weapons, and his armory now includes dozens of +1 and +2 weapons, Defenders, Unholy Avengers, Dragon Slayers, Giant Slayers, etc etc, and six intelligent swords all of which are smarter than he is.
Yuri (thief 8, deceased), Sophia (magic-user 1 / thief 2, deceased), Ivan (thief 16, retired), Vladimir (thief 18, retired) - half elven siblings. This family of thieves had varying degrees of success. They weren't quite as greedy or as much fun as Hemo.
Gryma Lars - human fighter 20 - retired. Gryma Lars was the brother of Grym Lars who died young. From the cold northern wastes, Gryma Lars was a taciturn killing machine. He was never as famous as Paragon, but he didn't have the sort of personality which attracted fame.
Kurin, KILLER OF GARILLARZ - dwarven fighter 10 - retired. Kurin makes this list due to his strong personality. He was known for his bravery, but in actual fact he was too stupid to know fear. ("He knows no danger, he knows no fear, he knows nothing.") If someone was needed to taste a suspicious substance, or open a suspicious door, or leap into a vat of boiling oil, Kurin was always the one to do it. Strangely, he always survived. He became known as killer of garillarz after fighting a gorilla known as "the ripper-aparter". He still has the head.
Hmm, that's enough. You should be asleep by now.
I know there's nothing more boring than a role-player telling you about his characters, so you should stop reading this post now. I preferred to play thieves - characters with a wide variety of tricks up their sleeves, the occasional chance to do some exploring by themselves, and the occasional chance to rip the other guys off. I also had success with clerics and fighters, but never achieved much with magic users. Here are some of my more successful characters.
Hemo - elven thief - died in the Demonweb Pits. It was a right royal pain keeping an elf alive - they had to be resurrected rather than raised, which was expensive. Hemo was the perpetrator of the biggest rip-off I managed in my time. Together with Erica the Cleric he killed a frogemoth and stole the treasure which was over 100K gp if I remember correctly. Started a cafe called Hemo's Eat House which lasted longer than he did.
Charlemagne - human bard - not sure where he died. Spent some time in the service of Lolth in the Demonweb pits. Bards were hard to make, and not very much use, so Charlemagne mostly filled in as a crappy fighter. I do like the more obscure character classes though. I had a number of druids as well.
High Lord Paragon - human fighter 18 - retired. Paragon was originally a paladin but our campaign didn't really support the paladin class so eventually he fell. He was typically the leader of any party he was part of, and always fought in the front row without fear. In particular, he stood like a rock while wussy magic users such as Bon and Lysipius fell like flies. In one of his most famous battles he severed both legs of a nycadaemon in one round.
Saint Bernard - human fighter 16 / cleric 19 - retired. Bernard completely lacked any personality. With his intelligence of 7, dexterity of 7 and charisma of 6 (after Lolth deformed him), Bernard was often mistaken for a victim rather than a hero. Nevertheless he was always in the thick of the fighting and able to patch up the party afterwards. Eventually Bernard became the person to whom low-level characters sold excess magic weapons, and his armory now includes dozens of +1 and +2 weapons, Defenders, Unholy Avengers, Dragon Slayers, Giant Slayers, etc etc, and six intelligent swords all of which are smarter than he is.
Yuri (thief 8, deceased), Sophia (magic-user 1 / thief 2, deceased), Ivan (thief 16, retired), Vladimir (thief 18, retired) - half elven siblings. This family of thieves had varying degrees of success. They weren't quite as greedy or as much fun as Hemo.
Gryma Lars - human fighter 20 - retired. Gryma Lars was the brother of Grym Lars who died young. From the cold northern wastes, Gryma Lars was a taciturn killing machine. He was never as famous as Paragon, but he didn't have the sort of personality which attracted fame.
Kurin, KILLER OF GARILLARZ - dwarven fighter 10 - retired. Kurin makes this list due to his strong personality. He was known for his bravery, but in actual fact he was too stupid to know fear. ("He knows no danger, he knows no fear, he knows nothing.") If someone was needed to taste a suspicious substance, or open a suspicious door, or leap into a vat of boiling oil, Kurin was always the one to do it. Strangely, he always survived. He became known as killer of garillarz after fighting a gorilla known as "the ripper-aparter". He still has the head.
Hmm, that's enough. You should be asleep by now.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
I've Gone and Done It Now
After several years of consideration, I just went and bought the Dungeons and Dragons v3.5 core rule books. I think I've been thinking about this for about 5 years. When this started I read the System Reference Documentation, and designed a high-level module. Then I got involved in Neverwinter Nights for about a year and a half and played LOTS of that. Of course I had several more ideas for modules. Now even the wonders of board gaming have been unable to stop me thinking about D&D, and as the kid seems keen to play I've finally bought the books. I expect we'll play at some stage, but even if I just read the books and dream about the adventures I could have in theory, I'll be happy.
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